How Secret Should Spiritual Knowledge Be? Human-spirit relations in the Nenets tundra

Abstract

This contribution takes a longue durée perspective of 20 years to the transformation of spiritual ways of knowing the land. The ways in which Nenets people in the Russian Arctic display or hide their relations with the spirits from incomers have changed over time, due to a number of outside influences, but also to relations of trust between the author and the practitioners in the field. The Nenets have a very vital culture of nomadic mobility with large herds of domestic reindeer in the Arctic tundra, with migration routes reaching up to 1,200 km yearly on reindeer sledges. The landscape is inhabited by the spirits of the ancestors, with spiritual energy concentrated at stationary sacred sites on the one hand, but also mobile sanctuaries in sledges (Skvirskaya 2005) that travel with most nomadic households on their migration routes, pulled by specially selected sacred reindeer.

Keywords

• nenets
• extractive industries
• intimacy
• offerings
• sacred site rituals
• west siberia